How to Make People Look at your Fashion

Nothing attracts as much as a story. But what if you only have one picture to tell it? One of the many ways to do that is a riddle structure, like in the picture above. It will pull people in, and they won’t let go until they have found the solution. In the process they will have had many long good looks at your fashion…

When you look at the two girls in the picture above, you’ll see it is the same girl – in two opposing expressions, picturing the opposing poles of her character.

Her character to the right has her eyes downcast.

She is thoughtful, looking to the inside.

She is beautiful and elegant… and seems to be unapproachable as she only sees what’s inside of her. And what has already happened. Her past.

Her other character is looking at you. She is open to the outer world, and her future.

She is ready to set sail to new lands…

And when you look at her closely, the top of her head is in the clouds, her hair has become the clouds herself, as has her mind, which is planning, dreaming, going with these traveling clouds.

Like a benevolent goddess, she stands for a great future.

Photography is truthJean-Luc Godard

As the girl is split between looking to the inside and looking at the outside, the landscape is equally polarized. The upper half of the picture is the bright expanse of the open sky with its traveling clouds.

The lower half is the dark, mysterious shadow world below the water line, the realm of the mystery of the soul. They are separated by the mirror of the ocean surface, reflecting the sky, hiding the shadow world – but also being the door between the two opposing worlds.

The great painter David Hockney wrote in his book “A History of Pictures” that one can only look at a photograph a very short time.

This is correct for most photographs, especially for commercial images that only snap and grab a moment. And if it’s an obvious moment like presenting a product, it is forgotten the moment the eyes move on.

But photographs that do not just contain one moment are a different game. They invite to stay, examine, explore.

When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.Robert Frank

Complex, story telling images can be looked at just as long as paintings. And, as you may already have noticed, not all photographs are photographs. The image above consists of five photographs, fused together to tell a story in one picture.

This way, the eye can be led to travel through the picture and stay and look around. And notice the dress the girl is wearing. It creates engagement, where the person looking at the picture brings himself in and connects to his own life.

A fashion design, or any product, that is involved in such a complex picture, will be seen much more consciously and – very important – emotionally. And it will be remembered.
That is the power of artistic creation and storytelling.

Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.Alfred Stieglitz